Are You Deficient In Iodine?

First of all, I do not condone supplementation of ANYTHING without first determining that you are, in fact, deficient in whatever you plan to supplement. Supplements can be for a short term or a long term but it is up to you to do your own research and consult with your health practitioner to determine what's right for you. Too much of a good thing may not be a good thing.

Supplements often need other supplements to help them work. Such is the case with iodine...it's buddies with selenium.

So, I fell down this particular rabbit hole doing research on my hubby after he got back his recent blood work which included a full thyroid function panel. Low and behold, they had done an iodine result in that panel and it was low. T4 was also low but everything else was within normal range but at the low end. Since we've already dragged his hemoglobin (kicking and screaming) from 9.2 mg% to 15.5 mg% using supplements of iron, B12 and folic acid, could this low thyroid function (or more specifically low iodine) be the reason for constantly being cold and fatigued and sleeping more than normal?

Please read both of the following links...what I read was unknown to me.

I'm not a fan of how the Life Extension article is written, because they've essentially written an article on and included statistics relating to iodine deficiency, which is based off of estimated intake levels and has nothing to do with whether a clinical disease state is present. In other words, you can be "iodine deficient" but be healthy and free of any diseases that can result from iodine deficiency. Even so, iodine deficiency can lead to hypothyroidism and goiter and those are serious and disfiguring issues. It is very easily prevented with iodized salt, although as the article points out now people have stopped consuming much (if any) table salt. I recall reading an article not too long ago where it was suggested bread makers should start using iodized salt instead of uniodized and I thought that sounded like a rather good idea. The nice thing about using salt as a delivery vehicle was that, at least when people aren't thinking about the health risks, people consume a very predictable amount of salt. Bread intake is not as predictable, and certainly on this forum we have a large number of people who don't eat wheat at all.

As far as your husband is concerned, I imagine his physician told him that he had no indications of any thyroid disease. You mentioned low thyroid function, which physicians would refer to as hypothyroidism, but your husband most certainly does not have it by the information you provided. It's perfectly acceptable for iodine and T4 to be slightly low if TSH is not elevated, and especially so if levels of T3 are within the reference range. Iodine supplementation can and will increase the amount of thyroid hormone produced, however since your husband was likely already operating at his homeostatic setpoint, with continued supplementation his thyroid hormone levels will likely return to near baseline as less TSH is released due to negative feedback. In other words, any changes as a result of supplementation may be temporary. If he uses table salt, iodized table salt should supply more than enough for his needs so that may be an easier/cheaper supplement in the long term if and when any seemingly significant improvements diminish.

I actually chose that article because it was written in everyday language that most people on this board could understand.You guys could always go down to the references and copy and paste them into google to get the actual medical studies done. Or you could look up "iodine and breast tissue"..."iodine and prostate gland"..."iodine and ovaries"...etc.The point is that iodine is used by many more tissues than just in the thyroid.I never mentioned thyroid disease in reference to my hubby but even his Doctor suggested the iodine supplementation for OPTIMAL conditions. I guess he could have stopped taking the iron, b12 and folic acid supplements when his hemoglobin reached the low end of normal too.I don't use salt at all...we eat the same foods but he salts his...and yet my iodine is normal. What's up with that?Everybody's different and their bodies function in different ways. It is up to each of us to find out what is optimal for ourselves and address issues accordingly.Bromine, fluoride and chlorine all displace iodine in the body...more to think about.Keep your minds open. Remember than none of us takes the same medicines or in the same doses. We use what works best for us individually.

Life Extension - it looks like their medical articles are a means of promoting their dietary supplements.

This goes on quite a bit. I have a friend who works for an alternative medicine supplier. Even though she has no medical background at all, her boss makes her scour the internet for factoids and come up with bogus reports that support the use of their products. She's pretty disgusted with the whole thing and wants to quit but needs the money.

Most research carried out by research universities is of a good quality. There are some cases where heightened skepticism is necessary depending on where the funding is coming from, but in general the research is being carried out by professionals (generally professors and/or specialists in their field) who genuinely care about advancing science and discovering the unknown. Research performed by private companies is typically the research you need to read with a high amount of skepticism, particularly when they're benefiting financially from the results.

Of course, just because research is unbiased doesn't mean it's correct. There are still plenty of poorly designed studies from which the results, though unbiased, are questionable. As someone who frequently reads research publications, I can tell you that a great deal of them essentially conclude "we're not sure what's going on here" and/or "more research is needed." Every couple of years, or after a sufficient number of various small studies have been done, a research group will come along who will do a meta-analysis of studies relating to a particular topic. This is important because it can strengthen or weaken the conclusion of previous studies. The amount of relevant studies that are rejected for being of poor quality in meta-analyses is usually high. If a recent meta-analysis is available for a particular research topic, it's often helpful to keep the conclusions of the meta-analysis in mind when reviewing any relevant studies.

Essentially, the results of a single study can't be relied upon even if the study was unbiased and of good quality. It's when multiple unbiased, high quality studies are reaching the same conclusion that you can start to feel confident that a particular hypothesis is on the right track.